


Poetries for Apophis

by Anonymous



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Consensual Sex, Dubious Morality, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Five doesn't get stuck in the future, Mutual Pining, No incest if you understand Fiveya, Psychological Trauma, Reginald Hargreeves bought twenty-one children instead of seven au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:02:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27311602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: "Le cose più perfette sono anche le più suscettibili di ricevere sia l'apprezzamento che l'abuso.The most perfect things are also the most likely to receive both appreciation and abuse."_ Dante Alighieri
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy) & Everyone, Number Five | The Boy/Vanya Hargreeves, Vanya Hargreeves & Everyone
Comments: 10
Kudos: 44
Collections: Anonymous





	1. First Circle (Limbo)

Vanya tried to contain her nervousness as she walked towards Five's room that night. Everyone in the house was already asleep and Grace was recharging, but she knew the boy would stay up late reading a book he had recently purchased.

“Inferno” by Dante Alighieri. He had insisted on buying the Italian version. According to Five the translations "corrode the real meaning of the words”. But his vocabulary in the language was still not that extensive, and Reginald had insisted that the boy would not understand a word of the book unless he bought it in English. Of course, that was enough to make him even more obstinate.

Vanya closed her eyes as she remembered Five's tempestuous demeanor and his endless arguments with the Italian and Latin teachers. Her fingers touched the knob hesitantly, still quite uncertain whether to enter or not, still wasn't sure if she could handle the boy's abrasive behavior.

She immediately regretted her decision because a screeching noise, loud enough to wake everyone in the house (or so Vanya thought), echoed down the hall when she opened the bedroom door.

But Five didn't seem to notice her or the sound, he was completely immersed in the words he was reading. Just the sight of him made Vanya's entire body shudder with an unsettling agitation. She wasn't sure if she was sad, scared, or just absolutely furious.

"So are you leaving?" She stammered in an almost inaudible whisper.

"What?" He kept his back to the girl, completely ignoring her presence.

"Are you leaving?" Her tone was harsher this time, almost caustic.

He closed his book in an abrupt gesture and finally turned to look at Vanya's distressed features. Both of them were visibly exhausted. She had almost imperceptible dark circles under her eyes (of course Five had noticed), her hair was matted, and even from afar the agitated skin around her nails was visible. He knew that his eyes probably also carried taciturn shadows and that his features also most likely expressed his exhaustion, especially now that Reginald had stopped buying coffee, and he was experiencing caffeine withdrawals.

The boy shrugged his left shoulder in a tenuous movement as he watched little number seven, somewhat uncomfortable with her fatigued appearance.

Of course Vanya’s mournful humor had not been noticed by everyone in the house. She continued to maintain her engaging and gentle surface, always smiling at number four and number three when she saw them in the halls, laughing at the unnecessary fights between number twelve and number ten, and being so polite, even when ignoring the occasional flirtations that Eighteen never gave up doing during their violin lessons.

But Five noticed, as he always did.

"What do you mean?" He had already forgotten the question.

"You know exactly what I mean." The girl felt her face boil with shame. It was two in the morning, and she sounded so... Petty.

“I don’t.” His austere voice remained unaltered, completely indifferent to her exasperation.

For a brief moment Vanya felt an overwhelming urge to yell at him, curse him in all the languages she knew and punch that impassive expression off his face. She also felt a sudden urge to cry. The girl stifled a sob inside her throat in the hope that Five wouldn't notice the way her eyes were filling with tears.

“Don’t play dumb. I heard you talking to number nine in the kitchen this morning.”

The boy looked away with a rueful sigh. Vanya knew that expression, the apologetic and hesitant look, and the way his entire body slowly withered as he tried to come up with some plausible excuse. She had only seen him that way twice in her life: once when he accidentally teleported over a traffic light and couldn't get down (he was stuck for two hours up there and at the time he was only six), and the other one was when he was even younger and accidentally broke a very expensive ceramic vase that Reginald had received as a gift from a co-worker.

Vanya knew he was about to come up with an evasive and rude response. Things really were quite abnormal between them since their last conversation, but in reality, it no longer mattered what Five said or did, he had already made everything very clear to her with just that expression. And she was right, he was leaving.

"Traitor." She thought "Traitor, traitor, traitor." The girl turned her back on him and started walking to her room in turbulent steps, almost running.

At that point Vanya should already know that it was useless to run from him. She was pulled by the boy's arms so abruptly that before she could even rationalize what was happening, her back was pressed against the wall.

The corridor was dark and the girl couldn't see him even though he was less than a foot away from her. She could just feel his touch, his right hand covered her lips so she wouldn’t make any sound and his left held her shoulder tightly, almost aggressively.

The two were so close that Vanya could feel his irregular breathing on her temple, so close that if she tilted her head a little forward his lips would touch her forehead, so close that she could smell the fragrance of his soap impregnated in his skin.

Her eyes closed as his fingers loosened, slowly letting go of her face.

“Seven...”

“Don’t call me that.”

Five opened his mouth to say something, but as soon as he got distracted she pushed him away. And he let her go so easily, made no effort to keep her in place.

For a brief moment Vanya wanted him to offer any resistance, wanted him to pull her close again, to hold her by the shoulders, to pin her back to the wall, to yell at her, to curse her, anything. Because anything was better than resignation, anything was better than just letting her go.

“Do you even remember my name Five?” She almost snarled at him. “Or am I so irrelevant that you would run away and travel in time without even saying goodbye? Without even letting me know!”

“Vanya...”

The girl didn't wait for him to finish, if she stayed there any longer she would cry in front of him and she couldn't expose herself that much in front of Five, not again.

Vanya slammed her bedroom door so hard that the noise must have woken all nineteen academy students, but she didn't care. At least once in her life she allowed herself a moment of teenage drama and let the tears run down her face.


	2. Chains

Vanya glanced at her reflection in the mirror for a brief moment while trying to untangle her hair. Although her features were generally amenable, that morning her gaze was morbid, sharp enough to draw blood on the pliable skin of too sensitive boys. (And god only knows how many times she actually did that.)

She had spent the whole night without blinking, too furious to sleep, but too dismayed to do anything other than stare at her bedroom ceiling. The girl was so distracted that she didn't even realize she had put the uniform sweater on backward.

"Seven! Get out! I need to use the bathroom!” Vanya recognized the voice of number ten as they continued to frantically knock on the door.

"Hayden, this house has nineteen bathrooms, go to another one!” She shouted back as she combed her bangs forward, almost as if she were trying to hide behind the brown locks.

Hide the corrosive bitterness, the indignation, the traces of the tears shed the night before. She would come out of the bathroom with her best social mask: indifference.

"They're all occupied Vanya!"

"Okay." She gave up trying to undo the knots in her hair and just tied it in a ponytail.

"Thanks." They murmured when she opened the bathroom door.

Vanya looked at where the head of number ten should be and smiled. Hayden was having trouble controlling their powers lately, especially when they were nervous. Sometimes when they were reading a book, the pages would disappear, sometimes their shoes and in more extreme cases their entire body would become invisible and their clothes would look like they are floating in the air.

And that morning Hayden was very anxious, which was to be expected considering that they would have physical evaluations in the first period.

All students got very apprehensive and hectic the week before performance reviews. Luther and Aurora accidentally broke several pencils, pens, door handles, and sometimes cutlery, Thalia started to float unintentionally, Sol sometimes caused fires in the kitchen and floods in the bathrooms… All the teenagers seemed to lose control over their respective powers during those seven days.

Number seven on the other hand was so indifferent that she hadn’t even prepared for the assessments, spent the whole night without closing her eyes, didn’t eat breakfast, and didn’t practice the day before. Reginald was not as strict with her as he was with the others when it came to physical training. After all, she would never really be a part of the teams.

Vanya’s gaze lingered on the poster with the three teams for a moment before she entered the gymnasium. A list of the students and their respective powers, always there to remind her of how ordinary she was when compared to the other twenty teenagers in the house:

  1. Luther - Physical strength and endurance.
  2. Diego - Control aerodynamics.
  3. Allison - Manipulating minds with rumors.
  4. Klaus - Ability to interact with the dead.
  5. Five - Spatial jumps and time travel.
  6. Ben - Ability to produce tentacles.
  7. Vanya – None.



  1. Lucas - Physical strength and endurance.
  2. Thalia - Fly and suspend objects in the air.
  3. Hayden - Invisibility.
  4. Lovisa - Ability to interact with the dead.
  5. Eugene - Manipulating minds with rumors.
  6. Ambrose - Physical strength and endurance.
  7. Lila - Mirror other’s abilites.



  1. Carter - Control aerodynamics.
  2. Cora - Control aerodynamics.
  3. Aurora - Physical strength and endurance.
  4. Martin - Invisibility.
  5. Sol - Control fire and water.
  6. Otis - Fly and suspend objects in the air.
  7. Cleo - Physical strength and endurance.



The first period of the day was always physical education and number seven had absolute certainty that if the authorities knew what happened in that place every morning, Reginald would be in jail for child abuse. Still, she entered the gym carelessly, already used to the daily exploration.

The triplets, Luther (1), Aurora (17), and Ambrose (13), together with Lucas (8) and Cleo (21) were always treated like Spartan soldiers. At the age of thirteen, they were already forced into intensive training, fought against each other until there were purple marks on their bodies and one of them couldn’t get up from the floor. They were also subjected to exhausting physical exercises such as carrying cars in their arms while walking around the neighborhood.

Klaus (4) and Lovisa (11) were often locked in dark places filled with graves in order to communicate with the dead. Diego (2), Carter (15), and Cora (16) were forced to throw knives at each other. Usually one of them stood in front of a target, like an obstacle, and the other had to throw the knife at the target without hitting the obstacle. (Vanya often took turns with the three to be the obstacle, as she was useless for anything else).

The injuries were superficial, they used different knives for these exercises, but the scars were still there.

Thalia (9) and Otis (20) were forced to jump off buildings (even though they were afraid of heights when they were children). Allison (3) and Eugene (12) were used by Reginald to manipulate the other children and Sol (19) was forced to spend hours suspending water/fire bubbles in the air.

Hayden (10) and Martin (18) were forced to undress in front of the others when they were young and were still unable to make their clothes invisible along with their bodies.

Reginald always said that it didn't matter because nobody would see them, but of course, they still felt extremely uncomfortable.

Ben (6) and Five (5) have always been treated as weapons of mass destruction since they were both extremely talented. Vanya couldn't even imagine how much blood and how many bodies the boys had seen, couldn't imagine how many times they heard desperate pleas for mercy and how many times they had to ignore them.

How many times has Five returned home in his blood-stained uniform? How many times Five had cut throats, opened bodies from the inside out, stabbed the belly of a man who wanted to go home and kiss his children's cheeks before they fell asleep? How many times had Reginald forced Five to kill people?

People, breathing, beating hearts, people who murmured about their families and shouted their mothers' names before life left their bodies. Humans.

When she thought about it, her stomach sank, because of course he wanted to leave, of course Five wanted to run away, of course he didn't want to be a murderer, a weapon anymore. And he had every right in the world to go. He had every possible justification, but Vanya would never accept it. Pure selfishness. She knew it was latent selfishness, but she didn't care, if he were to leave, he should at least take her with him. But he should never abandon her again, he had already hurt her too much the first time.

And surely the one who suffered the most was Lila, still, she never left Diego. The little number 14 had to do everything that the other nineteen students did together: she needed to carry cars in her arms, she was also locked in dark places filled with graves, forced to jump off buildings, to undress in front of the others, and to kill several people.

Whenever Vanya thought about it, she felt immensely grateful for not having to submit to those things. Of course, she also needed to train with the others, learn to throw knives (most of the time be the "obstacle") and combat strategies for self-defense (sometimes she needed to fight one of the five students with super-strength, she usually ended up in the floor coughing up blood when that happened). But she was aware that it was still very little compared to the burden of the others, especially Lila.

"First division, line up!"

Vanya was sitting on the bleachers as she watched the twenty teenagers bustle around the gym. The girl didn't even notice the arrival of Reginald and the other students until the moment he blew his whistle. She was way too absorbed staring at the crimson red dripping from her fingertips.

Seven wasn't sure if the injuries were due to the violin practice or her persistent mania to bite the skin around her nails, but her left middle finger was bleeding.

“Second division, line up! Third Division!” Reginald shouted orders in his usual authoritarian, cretinous tone and they obeyed, as submissive as a group of teenagers can be.

“Number three and number twelve! Today you will practice with number nine, number twenty, and number nineteen!” Then he looked at Vanya.

“Number seven and number five! Join number two. Today you’re going to take turns with him and number fifteen and sixteen. Seven, get three knives in the closet, today you’re going to throw them. Number 5, you’re just going to be the obstacle today.”

Vanya looked at Reginald for a moment, completely appalled. Was he giving her the chance to hurt Five on purpose? Did he know about the boy's plans to escape? Was that a strategy? It could only be.

Or was it not? Perhaps she was over-analyzing the gestures of a man who clearly did not have a lucid mind.

“Number seven!” Reginald's voice echoed through the gymnasium again, bringing her back to reality.

Her gaze turned instinctively to Diego, Cora, and Carter, Five was already with them. She walked towards them as if in a trance, curiosity shining in the girl's eyes while she smiled briefly at number two.

The boy handed her three daggers, all with the orange handle, barely sharp enough to cut the skin.

Vanya knew that those knives were unable to cause any deep injuries, but Five didn’t. He never trained being the obstacle (or with an obstacle) before and there was a possibility that the boy didn’t even know what was about to happen, he would just be waiting for commands.

Their eyes met for a brief moment as the girl played with one of the knives, throwing it in the air and holding it again tightly, just as she had seen Diego do one day. She was trying to intimidate him. Cora, Diego, Carter, Reginald, everyone seemed to notice, but the boy continued with his impassive, disinterested expression.

The girl felt herself on the verge of tears. She wanted a reaction from him, anything. Guilt, remorse, sadness, fear, anything. She wanted him to be at least minimally affected by her, whether, in a good or bad way, it didn't matter. Vanya just couldn't handle the indifference.

Not when she had exposed herself so completely, shown herself so clearly vulnerable and hurt, going to his room in the middle of the night like a stray dog asking for attention.

And getting nothing.

 _I don't need you to like me. I don't need you to desire my presence as I desire yours. But I need you to feel something, I need you to break as much as I did. I need you to regret hurting me. Maybe that way I don't feel so deeply humiliated_.

“Five, stand on top of the red ‘x’ on the floor.”

The boy obeyed Reginald's command and Vanya immediately hurled one of the knives, without any prior warning. The blade passed dangerously close to Five's ear and hit the center of the target behind him, the boy reacted.

"Are you crazy?" He screamed.

Reginald remained silent and Vanya hurled the second knife. The object passed close to the boy's shoulder and hit the target's edge, his features were stunned and Vanya adored it. The red cheeks, the exasperated tone when he asked if she had gone mad, the frightened eyes... It was just so much better than indifference.

She threw the last dagger and it almost scratched his arm, but it hit a place near the center of the target. He swallowed and she smiled victoriously.

Reginald didn’t react. He wrote something down in his notebook silently and then walked away from them, heading towards number one. The man used to do that on the day of the assessments. He chose students in random order and watched them quickly, less than three minutes each. It wasn't even necessary, in fact, Vanya knew he evaluated them by the camera footage from the gym.

Cora raised her hand to Vanya when he left "Well done little one!" and they gave each other an exuberant high five. The two were not exactly friends, but they developed a friendly partnership over time. Diego and Carter gave her the nickname “little one” and Cora joined them after a while.

Five watched them in disbelief, frowning with his hands in his pockets as if he was waiting for an explanation. Vanya liked that posture, that face.

Everything was better than indifference, anything was better than indifference. She wanted him to get pissed at her, it was better than just not noticing her presence at all.

"Five, this is how the exercise works, get used to it or ask Reginald to go back to training with your usual colleagues." Carter said as he removed the daggers from the target and Five's expression neutralized again.

As soon as the knives were handed back to Vanya, she smiled defiantly at Five, a gesture so involuntary that the girl didn't even notice that she was smirking until she saw the boy cynically smile back.

She purposely threw the knife near his neck and the object hit the target's edge. It wasn't her intention to hurt him, it never would be, but she wanted to see his reaction. The second knife flew over his head, missed the target, and fell to the ground. The Third hit the center of the target.

"Do the four of you try to kill each other very often?" He mocked.

"Stop being a pussy Five." Diego scoffed and Cora explained right away:

“These knives don't make deep cuts, they just scratch.”

"You could have told me." Five looked Vanya in the eye, his expression was not neutral and she liked it, but she couldn't say exactly what it was. Indignation? Concern? Maybe something between the two.

"I could." She agreed handing the knives to Diego, it was his turn to throw.

"I am the obstacle this time!" Cora volunteered.

The rest of the training passed quickly. Reginald continued with his corrosive silence as he watched them, only occasionally shouting a command in his authoritative voice. Vanya could also see from the corner of her eye Aurora and Ambrose fighting until Ambrose fell to the ground throwing up, could hear Klaus's desperate screams, Thalia the floating in the celling and crying because she couldn't get down...

At least things seemed peaceful in her group that day. Diego managed to get one of the knives to twist around Carter's head twice before hitting the target, the center of the target, as usual. Cora encouraged the boys and Five stared at Vanya coldly.

She didn't dare look at him back. All the shame returned to her body and suffocated her slowly as she remembered his face last night. The devastatingly beautiful features contracted in a guilty expression when she accused him, his shoulders sinking in a penitent sigh, his callused hand covering her face tightly…

Vanya wondered how much longer her erroneous feelings would remain loyal to Five. He had already abandoned her once, at the age of thirteen he traveled in the future, stayed two months away, and when he returned, he avoided her for months. Now he was almost eighteen and was planning to do that again.

Every night while he was away, she left the lights on and made snacks for him, everybody saw it and she was sure that everyone in the house knew about her feelings for him. Everyone saw the way she waited for him; they heard the way she cried in her bedroom thinking he was dead... And now he was planning on leaving her again.

She wondered if he knew. Probably not. Nobody had the courage to talk about romantic interests among students, so probably nobody mentioned it to him.

Luther and Allison continued to run away together, going too cheap hotels in the middle of the night, Klaus continued to flirt with Diego without any shame, in public, sometimes in front of Reginald. Diego ignored him, he had a secret crush on Lila, besides, he would never do that to Ben, he kept trying to get Klaus's attention, but he was shy, too subtle.

Everyone knew about the dating, the crushes, sometimes just the sex. They were, after all, teenagers. Things couldn't be more obvious, but nobody talked about it openly. They were just unsaid but undeniable truths.

But she and Five? Vanya has always been discreet about her feelings. That was until the week he left, she was vulnerable, she even confessed her passion when Allison asked her. "I am hopelessly in love with him." She whispered even though the two were alone in the room.

"Vanya?"

The girl blinked at Five's voice and the gymnasium was empty, everyone had already gone to the cafeteria. She remained silent sitting on the bench and tried to keep her expressionless face while looking at him.

"Why do you care?”

"What?"

"About me leaving." The usual impatient tone in his voice. "Why do you care?"

"I don't know." She lied.

"I can take you with me." He suggested, but his tone was bored, as if he was offering it out of pity.

"I don't want to go anywhere with you." She reached up to her neck and pulled the necklace out of her shirt. A golden chain with a small padlock, he had given it to the girl on her thirteenth birthday.

He only gifted her.

When Vanya questioned this, he said, "The others are irrelevant" and she held his hand for the first time.

He immediately took her hand and kissed her fingers, her wrist, and her forearm. Drawing delicate lines with his lips, in the same way, that heartthrobs did with young girls in the old movies she liked to watch.

But then his caresses reached her shoulders and she stepped back. Vanya felt ticklish in that place. Five also took a step back and after that, he never touched her like that again. She felt stupid, but also never had the courage to mention it to him.

“You still have this?" He asked looking at the necklace.

"Yes, I still have that." She raised her hand with the necklace to give it to him. "And I don't want it anymore." The girl added in a whisper.

He held the padlock and cleared his throat before speaking.

"You know Seven, I don't want to be stuck here forever." He confessed while examining the necklace lock, it was intact, with a newly purchased look. She had taken care of the gift as a little treasure.

"No one is stopping you from leaving." She almost spit out the words as she got up from the bench.

"You are." He took a step towards the girl, his green eyes fixed on hers.

“I am not stopping you from doing anything. If you want to escape, you can go to the depths of hell and I wouldn't care.” She tried to sound as convincing as possible, it was easy, she was angry. And hurt.

"It is still preferable than staying here."

“Of course… The same thirteen-year-old with that heightened sense of rebellion. Nothing would ever keep you stuck anywhere, and clearly there's nothing keeping you here, is there Five?” _Not even me._

He immediately remembered a famous quote from one of Vanya's favorite authors. Of course there was something keeping him there.

"Well, those who do not move do not notice their chains." A scathing smile crossed Five's face as he stuffed the little jewel in his pocket.

He would make her wear that necklace again. After all, she was the only thing that kept him there, his chains. And he would win her back. No matter how hard the boy tried, he would always be pulled back towards her, whenever he tried to run away, whenever he left, whenever he avoided her, everything would always bring him back to her.

Sure, she was pissed at him now, but he would change her mind, he was absolutely convinced of it.

Vanya let a cynical, corrosive laugh escape her lips as she watched the boy's arrogant posture. "And what the hell do you know about oppression?" She scoffed.

He narrowed his eyes, his hands still in his pockets. What did he know about oppression?

"Vanya..." His voice was harsh now. "Do you even have any idea how many people I have to kill almost every day to come back home?” _To you?_ He almost said. “How many bullet scars I have? How many times I vomited during training and had to keep going?... Don't treat it like you're the only victim here.”

“But you can leave, Five. And don't think you're the only one with scars here, I've vomited fucking blood during training Five. Blood. Do you remember that?”

His face contracted in an expression of pain, of course he remembered.

“You can leave whenever you please. I can’t. And you left anyway. Without me.”

“I came back.”

“Well next time, don’t even bother.”

“Seven… Are you bleeding?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would really like to thank my Beta, @PlumPromises s2. She was extremely helpful and attentive, especially as English is not my first language.  
> It was also great reading the comments! <3


	3. Cordialities

“You can leave whenever you please. I can’t. And you left anyway. Without me.”

Her eyes were shining.

 _Was she crying?_ Five wasn't sure, but she was beautiful. Vanya always had a strange charm when she was angry. Whenever she left aside her social facets and exaggerated benevolence and allowed herself to express real feelings.

Sometimes Five did it on purpose, teased her, and pushed her over the edge until she exploded and screamed at him. Then he hugged her tight and whispered false apologies in her ear.

As malicious as it may have sounded, the boy thought that Vanya was always more beautiful when she was exasperated, tearful, resentful... Only then did she abandon her feigned cordialities, her calculated indifference. Five watched her for a moment, trying to hide the fascination in his eyes. He liked the fact that she was being aggressive towards him, he liked it when she took a ferocious attitude, when her words became caustic. When she became real.

He would make her wear that necklace again. He would hug her in the gloom of her room and whisper three thousand apologies in her ear. And she would accept every apology, because she understands, she always understands. She knows he had his reasons for trying to escape and of course, he made a mistake when he didn't take her with him, but he came back to her because he always comes back to her.

“I came back.”

“Well next time, don’t even bother.” She ran her fingers through her hair, brushing her bangs out of her eyes and some of the brown locks turned red.

“Seven…” He looked at the girl's fingertips, she crossed her arms and a small smudge of blood started to form on the sleeve of her sweater, “are you bleeding?”

“Shit...” She whispered looking at the red spot.

"Let's go to the infirmary, Grace will know what to do." He reached out to touch her shoulder, but she drew back.

"I am fine."

"You're bleeding."

"I am fine." She whispered, holding her fingertips with her other hand.

"It will get infected."

She rolled her eyes.

“Look, I don't care that you're pissed at me right now, I'm taking you to the infirmary. Whether you like it or not.”

Her prominent eyes widened for a moment and then she nodded. He held her arm tightly and the two reappeared in the infirmary.

Five liked to jump with her. The girl always got a little dizzy after they reappeared in another place, her hands clung tighter to the fabric of his clothes and she always looked around with huge admiration, trying to situate herself.

He looked at her reddened face for a moment trying not to be distracted by her touch as the girl leaned on his arm trying to stay upright. She looked scared; Vanya didn't go to the infirmary very often. Five, on the other hand, was already used to the sinister appearance of the place, the white walls peeling, the bloodstains that Grace couldn’t get off walls and cupboards getting darker and darker over time, the twenty empty stretchers, waiting for the next victim. Twenty. Only twenty.

"Here." He murmured to Vanya as he guided her with his hand between her scapulae to one of the stretchers.

“Grace is probably busy doing something important Five, we better get out.” She mumbled sheepishly.

The girl had returned to her exaggerated politeness, her courtesies, and social masks. He felt his stomach sink with her words _It's okay. I'm just bleeding. I don't want to disturb anyone, let's go. How inconvenient of me... Bleeding_... For a moment he wanted to hold her tightly by the shoulders, shake her and ask her to stop treating herself that way.

"You're bleeding." He spoke almost as if to remind her of that fact, he would not be surprised if she had already forgotten. She always forgets herself.

He wanted her to show resentment again, pride, selfishness, any sense of self-preservation, be it emotional or physical. Five preferred Vanya when she was human, when her flawed nature was exposed, when she was honest. Even if it only happened when she was pissed.

He took an antiseptic spray from inside one of the cabinets and three Band-Aids from a red box on the shelf. He has been there so many times that he already knew the inside of each cabinet, where each antibiotic, anti-inflammatory, ointments, and gauze were. He knew the story of each bloodstain on the walls, knew how to locate each one and tell which of the twenty students had bled there.

Vanya noticed the boy's sullen gaze as he observed a brownish stain on one of the white countertops, but decided not to ask. The girl knew she would easily forgive him for leaving if she heard any stories about his injuries, about the times he almost died inside that house or on a mission. So she just offered her hand to him in an apologetic gesture.

For a moment, Five wanted to kiss her wounds but stopped himself.

He still wiped the girl's fingers taking a little longer than he probably should. Just to feel the texture of her skin, so smooth, pale, and immaculate between his hands… When he finished putting the Band-Aids on the girl's fingers, he stroked her wrist, drawing small circles on her skin with his thumbs. She pulled away from the touch as if it had burned her skin.

"Have you finished?" She asked in an acidic intonation, as if the girl had just remembered that she was angry with him.

He smiled at her. One of his closed, cynical smiles, but he was actually happy.

"When did things get so complicated?"

"When you left me." She whispered.

"It was long before that."

She fell silent, looking at the bandages on her fingers.

 _I wouldn't have left without you if I thought you wanted to come with me._ He almost said, but he didn't have the courage. Five knew that if he said it, he would end up confessing everything.

“Let's go." He took her arm and she opened her mouth to protest, but he continued: "The evaluations are not over yet, we are going to continue in the external area today."

And without asking for permission, he took her arm and the two reappeared in the garden.


End file.
